Dianne E. Vapnek

Dianne Vapnek, a longtime resident of Santa Barbara, died peacefully at home on June 26th, 2026. Dianne will be remembered as a devoted wife, mother, and grandmother, and as the founder and director of Summerdance and Danceworks, which brought acclaimed modern dance companies and choreographers to Santa Barbara.

Dianne’s lifelong love of dance began when she visited Jacob’s Pillow in the Berkshires, near her childhood home of Holyoke, Massachusetts. Her parents, Bess Kaplinsky (nee Rickliss) and Nathan Kaplinsky ran a small grocery store called the Elmwood Market. Dianne, who graduated from Holyoke High School in 1958 could be found behind the cash register when she was not attending cheerleading practice or taking dance lessons.

She attended college at University of Miami, earning her BA degree in 1962. While in Miami, she met her future husband, Daniel Vapnek, of Monticello, New York. After their marriage in 1964, the newlyweds moved to Coral Gables, where Dianne taught school and Daniel completed his PhD in Microbiology. Their first daughter, Lara, was born in 1967.

A few years later, they moved to New Haven, Connecticut, where Daniel pursued a post-doc at Yale University, and Dianne gave birth to their second daughter, Brett, in 1970. From 1972 to 1981, they resided in Athens, Georgia, where Daniel served as a professor of Microbiology at the University of Georgia. In 1973, their third daughter, Susanna, was born.

In Athens, Dianne taught modern dance and earned an MA degree in recreational therapy, with a special interest in dance therapy. A sabbatical for Daniel at UC San Francisco medical school provided an opportunity for Dianne to study modern dance with Margie Jenkins. The family camped on their way back and forth across the county in a used Volkswagen Vanagon.

In 1981, Daniel accepted a job with Amgen, a new biotechnology company, and the family moved to Thousand Oaks, California. A few years later, Dianne joined Daniel on a business trip to Japan, inaugurating a fascination with the country that would lead to numerous visits, collecting Japanese pottery, and eventually, an apartment in Kyoto.

Attracted by the architecture and natural beauty of Santa Barbara, Dianne and Daniel purchased a home on Plaza Rubio, across from the Mission Rose Garden in 1995. In the early 2000s, they moved to a home on Garden Street designed by the noted modernist architect Thornton Ladd.

Eager to contribute to Santa Barbara’s vibrant cultural scene and to support an underappreciated form of art, Dianne launched Summerdance, a new festival of contemporary dance, in 1997. During its decade of operation, the festival became an integral part of the town’s cultural landscape and an important place on the national dance scene. In 2008 Dianne launched DanceWorks in collaboration with the Lobero Theatre. Nationally known choreographers spent a month in Santa Barbara creating a new work which was presented at the Lobero.

In 2018, Danceworks produced its last show. In recent years she began suffering from symptoms of dementia and would eventually be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Dianne is survived by her loving husband, Daniel, her three daughters, and five grandchildren, and her brother, Alan Kaplinsky.

A memorial service will be held at a later date. Donations in memory of Dianne may be made to the Lobero Theatre, https://www.lobero.org/support/